Week 2 - Dave Hickey's 'A Home in the Neon' & Mike Davis 'Fear, Sand and Money in Dubai'

His idea that there is no social class in Las Vegas I find a bit wrong though. Stars and celebrities are held up like royalty whereas your diner waitress is at the bottom of the ladder. Funny how most stars start at that bottom but them most I guess fall off on the way up! The flashing lights and big buildings of Las Vegas draw people in like a moth to the light but the problem is when you get there I think the commercialism and capital needed to live there probably mean that those who don’t become ‘cocktail’, using Hickeys idea, get zapped away by the bug killer..

Davis shows this class divide a bit clear in Fear and money in Dubai. A place which as an Arab I find a bit of a Disneyland idea compared to the country of my birth, Egypt. Most Arab countries I know have a clear class divide but Dubai has its clear steps on the ladder. There are rules to be followed and if you follow them then you will have a great time. Stop following and face the punishment. I think it is this which stops it becoming a ‘home’ but it is more a house.

A place of such importance in Western, financial, illegal, tourist worlds was built, often literally, on the blood of the lower class and when they tried to fight back are flicked off. Considering the article is quite a few years old now some of the points Davis made have come about and of course the idea of what will happen when the oil stops? The overspending left the country unstable for a while with projects going unfinished, will they learn? The stretch of the imagination almost sunk the country back into the sands from where it came but it was this imagination that brought it out of these sands so that is a difficult balance to keep. 

These two countries to me almost represent the American / Arab mixture. Both are places of extravagance, both full of people not native to the area. Both cities which would be damaged by the decline of money and who rely on their buildings to keep the money coming in. Is it in these cities the troubles of the past can be fixed? Perhaps its the westernise Arab in me but could Las Vegas ever be my home - no! Could Dubai - although closer probably not. Its too commercial and unequal for me but could I enjoy the place as a tourist or worker / investor? Sure. It’s exciting…… IF you follow the rules! 

Week 1 - Will Self 'Battersea Power Station' & Jonathan Meades, Zaha Hadid 'The First Great Female Architect'.

Self sounds quite aggressive in his writing and the use of swearwords in an article was a shock but all helps make his article to stick in the mind. He discusses how London has grown around the power station and even next to new sky scrapers and other iconic buildings the sheer size of Battersea makes it still an iconic building. He almost seems to admire Hitler and how he supposes he would love the Battersea Power Station.

On the other hand Meades seems to almost be making fun of Hadid throughout his article. A few times in the article he makes comment on her English and seems annoyed that she is not communicating clearly with him. I actually found his English difficult to understand because is he being sarcastic to Hadid or trying to be nice to her? It is difficult to tell.

Meades seems to be admiring Hadids ability to design in different styles and admits that she ‘has style all right, but not a style.’ Then he goes on to say how she is scared by understanding her process and calls her a starchitect, I’m worried that he is kind of jealous of her celebrity status and like he is looking down on her because she lives in London but does not have any building in London by her name apart from the Olympic Aquatic Centre which he calls a scheme.

Where Self is almost seeming to admire Hitler and the Battersea Power Station Meades makes comment after comment about Hadid’s English, sex, talks about her as an artist rather than architect and even questioning her reason to live in London. Its all very strange. His article is difficultto read and understand his opinion because he does not seem clear on what his feelings for Hadid and her work are.....

Week 1 - Alan Badiou 'The Crisis is the Spectacle'

Alain Badiou gives a consistent, critical view on the communist experience of the 20th century in the light of the real revolutionary ideas and possibilities that could've been but never were, and what we can learn from that. Badiou describes this situation with a theme most people will be able to understand – a disaster movie. We sit and watch the situation unfold in fromt of us. We can do nothing as the crisis grows and grows and the world is on the edge. Then like any good films the hero flys in and saves us all. The problem how Badiou describes though isn't the world that we need to save but the banks. The pillars of our economy. These fall and economy falls around us but instead of hers its the people and the government that comes to the rescue.

He begins his book by noting that “communism” has been labelled a failure in the world in which we operate. He then asks, what do we mean by “failure”? But with that I ask, what does this actually mean? What is failure?  Is it that we lose confrontation of a war or that we have simply failed an experiment for now? "Failure is not falling down. It is refusing to get back up." 

His writing was difficult to understand and to follow perhaps because his topic of economics is about what we might have floating around rather than what we have in our hand. What does four hundred billion euros look like? Is it even feasible to see that amount of money in real life? In a physical form? Or is this four hundred billion euros just what the government, what the people in a different social space to the common man tell us what it is? If all the computers in the world crashed tonight will that four billion euros still exist? What would it be worth if the economy collapsed or the world suffered a catastrophe? 

This money, this economy maybe its as make believe as Badious idea of the film. We can watch what is being done with the money in terms of buildings being built, goods being bought but what the 'film' is happening behind the scenes - we see whats being staged we don't see behind the stage. We don't see the four hundred billion euros!

If you are working with things that exist as ideas but have no physical presence, do they exist at all? What makes 100 euros worth more than 100 tomatoes? Is it just because the government says you need money to build an economy, to buy goods. If you didn't have any food surely 100 tomatoes would be worth more to you than 100 pieces of paper? 100 euros is only worth more because the banks, the government tell us its worth more. I think it’s all debatable whether Badiou’s ‘Communist Hypothesis’ is a step forward into communism or a step backwards into a political philosophy that advocates stateless societies.